What to Look for When Picking Range Ammo

Just because you spend a lot of time at the range doesn’t mean that you want to spend a lot of money there as well.

Saving your good ammunition for when you need it and getting the cheap stuff for the firing range is a good way to save your money.

At the range, all you’re shooting is paper or foam, so why blow through a box of $50 rounds when you can get away with spending a fraction of that?

If you are trying to cut costs at the shooting range, there are a few pointers to follow to ensure you aren’t sacrificing quality.

First off, you have to decide which gun you’re going to shoot for target practice.

This will weight heavy on the kind of ammo you’re limited to buying. You could buy the cheapest box of ammunition for your .50 cal hand cannon, but it’s still going to cost much more that some of the more expensive options for your common .25 caliber handgun.

But smaller caliber ammunition doesn’t necessarily translate to more affordable.

For hand guns, typically the cheapest rounds fit in a .38 caliber revolver. Specifically, wadcutter and semi-wadcutter bullets are the most economical for long days spent at the shooting range.

There are a number of factors that make wadcutters less expensive, and subsequently even better for target shooting performance.

For starters, wadcutters (unless they are specially designed) cannot be fed from a pistol magazine to a gun chamber. Most wadcutter bullets have a flat or nearly flat front and can therefore primarily only be used in a revolver. Round point total or full metal bullets are designed for complete penetration and experience very little expansion on impact, unlike, say, hollowpoint rounds. Because they expand very little, they tend to fully exit the target body.

A complex design to prevent expansion, traditional bullets are composed of a brass capsule, or jacket, and a lead fire rim. But because the wadcutter bullet type is entirely exposed lead, it is a lot less costly to manufacture and produce. The solitary material and simple design keep production costs extremely low.

For target shooting, a wadcutter cuts a very clean hole through the paper target, reducing point errors and ensuring you have a productive day at the range.

Now that you know what type of ammunition to shoot at the range, all that’s left to do is equip yourself with proper hearing protection before you head out. Luckily, ESP has you covered there with our shooting ear protection products.